Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  The tiny, picturesque town of Winchelsea (so small it was almost a play town – an ornamental town) appeared to be completely empty – although its houses were all newly painted and their gardens were uniformly pristine.

  It was a beautiful place, but deserted.

  ‘It must’ve been evacuated,’ Dory boldly surmised.

  After several minutes of driving around, they eventually spotted a frail, somewhat beleaguered inhabitant forging a gradual path up the lonely High Street. Dory rolled down the car window as they drew alongside her.

  ‘Did something bad happen?’ he asked.

  ‘Bad?’ she echoed, carefully readjusting her walking frame. She seemed a little hard of hearing.

  ‘Yes. Something bad? An armed attack? Or a contagion of some kind?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Is everybody dead?’

  She looked shocked.

  He pointed, increasingly panicked, towards Fleet on the back seat. ‘Because I have the boy, see? I need to be especially careful. I have the boy with me this time…’

  Elen deemed this a good moment to gently accelerate. The car slowly pulled off with Dory still declaiming, loudly, from inside of it. The old woman stood and stared after them, bewildered.

  Elen’s dearest wish at that point was to drive straight home, but Dory wouldn’t hear of it. ‘I simply need to…to locate…’ he kept repeating, almost poignantly, ‘to set this all straight, somehow…’ he tapped at his head, ‘in here. I need the two different things – the two ideas – to just…to unify.’

  So she parked on a street adjacent to The Lookout (by the Old Strand Gate) where there was a famously stunning view over the marshes below (the Royal Military Canal, the long road into Rye, the remains of Camber Castle, Winchelsea Beach, Dungeness – the power station and the lighthouse, both twinkling, vaguely, in the Channel – even France, on a good day), and led him by the hand (although he insisted on leaving the boy behind: ‘as a precaution’) to take in the vista.

  The wind was biting and it was threatening to rain again. Dory gazed down, in silence, for several minutes, yet no matter how hard he tried (and he was trying – the powerful wave of his reason crashing, indomitably, against the sheer cliff of his instinct), he seemed incapable of feeling any kind of rapport with the landscape.

  ‘But where’s the great forest, Elen?’ he finally murmured.

  ‘I don’t know…Fallen?’ Elen suggested tentatively. ‘Or cut down?’

  ‘And the river? The Brede?’

  ‘Shrunken, perhaps, or…or diverted.’

  He gazed at her, astonished. ‘But what about the pilgrims?’ he asked. ‘How will they manage? How will they set sail?’

  ‘They won’t,’ Elen said, softly. ‘There are no pilgrims, Dory.’

  ‘No pilgrims?!’

  He shot her a scathing look then turned on his heel and began striding, rapidly, downhill.

  ‘Dory?’

  ‘There will always be pilgrims, Elen,’ he bellowed over his shoulder.

  ‘Dory!’

  ‘No. No…’ he gesticulated impatiently, ‘I must find the water.’

  He strode on, defiantly.

  ‘Dory!’

  He didn’t respond.

  She stood, clutching the car keys, uncertain whether or not to try and follow him on foot. But Fleet was alone, and she didn’t like to leave him unattended for too long. So she ran back to the car, unlocked it and wrenched open the door, only to be greeted by the unwelcome spectacle of a doleful-looking Michelle, hunched over on the driver’s seat, adrift in a large pool of her own feisty urine.

  ‘Look, Mama!’ Fleet chortled delightedly from the rear. ‘Michelle’s driving!’

  ‘Fleet!’ Elen exclaimed, dismayed. ‘I thought I told you not to move her from the plastic cover. Now she’s gone and done her business everywhere…’

  She gingerly lifted the dog and surveyed the damage.

  ‘Oh God…’ she shook her head, horrified. ‘This is a company car, Fleet. What on earth will Daddy say when he sees the mess she’s made…?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Fleet observed, phlegmatically, ‘because he isn’t here.’

  Elen leaned over, removed a handful of tissues from the glove compartment and did her best to wipe the dog clean. Once she’d finished, she dumped her, unceremoniously, into the back.

  ‘Mind my matches, Mama!’ Fleet squealed.

  What?!

  She saw that he had matches spread out all around him.

  ‘What are you thinking, Fleet?’ she reprimanded him. ‘You know you’re not meant to play with those until the sulphured ends’ve been chopped off. It’s too dangerous. They aren’t toys. Now put them away.’

  He stared at her, insolently.

  ‘I said put them away!’

  She began frantically dabbing at the saturated seat fabric.

  ‘I need the toilet, too, Mama,’ Fleet informed her, making no perceptible effort to tidy his mess up.

  ‘Well you’ll have to wait,’ she snapped. ‘We’re in a hurry.’

  She continued dabbing.

  Fleet gazed out of the window, glumly.

  ‘Put the matches away, Fleet,’ Elen warned him, ‘or I’m confiscating the lot – for good.’

  She carefully laid out a wad of dry tissues over the worst affected areas then took off her mac and arranged it over the top. She sat down, slammed the door shut and attempted to fasten her seat-belt. But she was clumsy. Her hands were cold and unwieldy. Her fingers slipped. She cursed under her breath.

  ‘Where’s John?’ Fleet suddenly piped up.

  ‘Daddy’s gone for a walk…’

  ‘Yes, I know Daddy’s gone,’ Fleet persisted. ‘But where‘s John, Mama?’

  Before she knew quite what she was doing, Elen had spun around and had grabbed the boy’s shoulder. ‘Never call him that again,’ she gasped, shaking him. ‘It’s Daddy. It’s Papa. It’s Dory. It’s Isidore. Never use that other name again. Never! D’you hear me?’

  The boy stared up at her, coldly. She stared back at him, appalled. ‘Just tidy that mess up,’ she whispered, removing her hand, with a shudder. ‘Please.’

  The boy didn’t move.

  She turned back around and lunged for her seat-belt, yanking it, violently, across her chest and then pushing it, viciously, into the requisite slot.

  ‘Click,’ Fleet said, as the two disparate parts made sudden contact.

  The boy spotted him first. They’d just visited the public toilets on Winchelsea Beach (which stood adjacent to the playing fields in a site known locally as The Old Harbour) and had clambered up the steep sea wall to take a cursory peek at the Channel.

  The tide was far out and the beach lay before them: a series of sharply graduating shingle banks, concluding in a smooth, delicately rippled expanse of golden sand. This sand was interspersed – at steady intervals – by deep swathes of sticky mud which’d been colonised by wading birds: oystercatchers, mainly (parading around, elegantly, in their suave black and white), a handful of hyperactive plover (dashing in and out with the waves like little wind-up toys), and a lone, peerlessly methodical dunlin (slipping its long beak into the goo like a conscientious nurse checking a patient’s temperature with an antique thermometer).

  The beach – while wind-swept and desolate – felt oddly inhabited (peopled, even) by the serried ranks of tall, wooden groynes which’d been neatly – almost miraculously – deposited into the sand, like a scruffy line of tin tacks half-tapped into plasterboard (‘They’re to stop the beach from washing away,’ Elen explained, much to Fleet’s burgeoning dismay. ‘But where will it wash to, Mama?’ he asked, querulously).

  Each individual groyne had been moulded by the sea into its own highly idiosyncratic form. There were giant spoons, warning fingers (pointing, arthritically, into the lowering sky), and huge needles (their glimmering eyes sometimes threaded by discarded clumps of multicoloured fishing twine, frayed scrags of synthetic turquoise rope, or long, coarse tangles o
f pungent, browning kelp).

  Dory was way off in the distance, small as an ant, up to his knees in sludge and slime.

  ‘Papa!’ Fleet yelled.

  Elen put out a hand to quieten him. ‘Hush now,’ she murmured.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because the wind’s too strong. He won’t hear you.’

  She paused, squinting intently into the weak afternoon light.

  ‘Can you tell which…uh…’ she cleared her throat ‘…which coat Papa’s wearing, Fleet?’

  ‘Coat?’ Fleet barely blinked. ‘The yellow coat, Mama.’

  She winced, then nodded, then folded her arms across her chest. ‘I wonder what he’s searching for?’ she murmured, almost to herself.

  ‘Papa’s looking for the trees,’ Fleet told her.

  ‘Trees?’

  ‘Yes. He’s remembering the great forest. He’s looking for the trees.’

  ‘He’s at the wrong end, then,’ a deep voice suddenly interrupted them.

  Elen turned, surprised. A man stood behind them, a tall, lean man in late-middle-age; a slightly dishevelled but nevertheless distinguished-looking man, garbed – almost head to foot – in ancient oilskins and an improbably long pair of black, rubberised wading boots. He held a spade and an old bucket in his hand.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The forest’s further along,’ he explained, pointing with the spade.

  ‘Down that way, over towards Pett Level.’

  ‘A forest,’ Elen frowned, ‘on the beach?’

  He nodded. ‘The petrified forest. Dimsdale forest. It’s only ever visible at low tide.’

  ‘What’s in your bucket?’ Fleet asked, trying to peer inside, but Elen restrained him.

  ‘Worms, son.’

  ‘Yuk.’

  Fleet grimaced. Then he threw back his shoulders and stuck out his chin. ‘I knows Gaynor,’ he swanked.

  ‘Who?’

  The man looked confused.

  ‘Gaynor. She does fishing. And she gets lots of medals for it. I saw them.’

  ‘Gaynor Thomas?’ the man asked.

  ‘I got this,’ Fleet said, ignoring his question but removing the little daisy from inside his coat pocket, ‘from her funny hat. Look.’

  He displayed the daisy on the palm of his hand.

  ‘I know Gaynor well, as it happens,’ the man said, bending down to inspect it. ‘She’s something of a local legend. We’ve fished together often. She’s a very talented young lady.’

  ‘My papa lived in her house,’ Fleet informed him, pointing over towards Dory who continued to stagger around – somewhat aimlessly – in the mud.

  ‘Did he indeed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well that’s very interesting. Does your…’ he hesitated before using the word, ‘your papa like fishing too?’

  ‘No. And her papa is very red and very fat.’

  Fleet blew out his cheeks and paraded around, ‘fatly’.

  The man’s stern face broke into a smile.

  ‘Don’t be so rude, Fleet,’ Elen murmured, grabbing his hand, eager to steer him away.

  ‘Can I look at your mathek, please?’ Fleet asked, refusing to be steered.

  ‘My what?’

  The man frowned, confused.

  ‘Your mathek,’ Fleet repeated.

  ‘My…?’

  ‘Maggots,’ Elen interrupted, ‘you mean maggots, don’t you?’

  Fleet grimaced, irritably.

  ‘They aren’t maggots,’ the man patiently explained, ‘they’re worms.’ ‘Beita,’ Fleet gasped, peering, excitedly, into the bucket, then rapidly withdrawing, with a terrified squeak.

  ‘What’s that again?’

  Fleet fiercely gnashed his teeth at him.

  ‘Ah…You mean bait.’

  Fleet gnashed again.

  ‘Or bite, eh?’

  Fleet nodded.

  ‘We’d better go and find Daddy,’ Elen said, half-turning towards the distant Dory.

  The man turned too, and as he turned one of his rubber boots discharged a small, flatulent sound.

  Fleet snorted, ribaldly. The man glanced over his shoulder, in surprise.

  ‘Guess what?’ Fleet said.

  The man half-turned back. ‘What?’ he answered, gamely.

  ‘John was hiding in the queen’s chamber when the queen bent over and made air…’

  Fleet bent over himself – to illustrate – and produced a loud, farting noise with his mouth.

  ‘Fleet!’ Elen chastised him, horrified.

  ‘And when she’d done it,’ Fleet continued, unrepentant, ‘she said…’ he adopted a high, fluting voice, ‘“The same is worth to me twenty pound!”’

  The man’s brows rose.

  ‘So John bent over – in the corner, where he’d been hiding all the while and spying on her – and he made air, only much, much louder…’

  Fleet promptly produced a second, even more resounding raspberry ‘…And then John says…’ he paused, judiciously, ‘“If yours is worth twenty then mine is worth forty!”’

  He cackled, uproariously, at his own punch-line.

  The man seemed uncertain how best to respond.

  Fleet stopped cackling. ‘It was very loud, see?’ he explained, ‘so it was worth more pounds.’

  ‘Yes,’ the man half-glanced towards Elen, his eyes twinkling, ‘I think I follow the logic of it.’

  ‘John was always making fun of the queen,’ Fleet continued, ‘because nobody else dared. They all hated her at court.’

  ‘Did they indeed?’ the man said.

  Fleet nodded. ‘She grew up with soldiers…’ he winced, fastidiously, ‘she was vulgar.’

  ‘Vulgar?’ the man echoed, plainly surprised by the boy’s sophisticated vocabulary.

  Fleet nodded. ‘Vulgus,’ he modified.

  ‘Do you actually understand what that word means?’ the man enquired, intrigued, ‘or are you simply repeating something you’ve heard?’

  ‘Something I heard,’ Fleet freely admitted. ‘John told me.’ He shrugged.

  ‘I’ve never even seen the queen…’

  ‘So what do you think John means when he says that the queen is vulgar?’ the man asked.

  Fleet thought hard for a moment. ‘It means she’s stupid,’ he declared, ‘and she doesn’t have any…’ he paused, frowning, ‘finus…no…finesse,’ he corrected himself.

  The man glanced over towards Elen. ‘How old is this child?’ he demanded.

  ‘Five,’ Elen murmured. ‘He’ll be six in July.’

  ‘Five?’ he seemed startled. ‘But his language skills are nothing short of astonishing…’

  ‘Yes…well he’s…he’s not normally quite this talkative,’ Elen observed (plainly somewhat confused herself by this rare display of loquaciousness).

  ‘Look at Papa!’ Fleet suddenly yelled.

  They both turned. Dory had fallen to his knees in the bank of mud (it was now slowly enveloping his thighs) and was patting at it, naively (almost like a baby), as though experimenting with its texture.

  ‘My youngest daughter,’ the man explained (obviously struggling not to be distracted by this curious spectacle), ‘was also a gifted child, so I know exactly what the pressures are – I mean as a parent – the particular kinds of challenges it generally gives rise to…’

  ‘Gifted?’ Elen echoed, dumbfounded.

  ‘Have they picked up on it at school yet?’ the man wondered.

  ‘At school?’ Elen slowly shook her head. ‘Uh…no. God, no. If anything they probably feel he’s a little under the average…’

  ‘Under the average?’ The man seemed amazed. ‘They must be deaf and blind…’

  Elen said nothing.

  ‘I mean he’s only five years old and he’s using synonyms. He’s experimenting with the Latin root. Surely that’s exceptional by any standard?’

  Elen’s cheeks reddened with a combination of pride and anxiety.

  ‘John told his wife that the q
ueen was deaf,’ Fleet began chatting away again, ‘so when the queen summonsed her to court to talk about all the bad things John had done – to try and get her to make him stop – his wife shouted at the queen so that the queen might hear her. Then the queen shouted back because John had told the exact same thing to the queen about his wife…’

  He giggled. ‘Instead of making things better, they was just shouting at each other. And the more they was shouting the more crosser they got…’

  The man listened intently to the boy’s chatter, his head cocked.

  ‘He got paid back in the end, though,’ Fleet ran on, with apparent satisfaction, ‘because the queen told the king about it.’

  ‘And what did the king do?’ the man wondered.

  ‘Nothing. But he warned John, in private. He said, “Stop teasing the queen!”’

  ‘And did he?’

  Fleet looked astonished. ‘Stop?! Of course not. The next day he pulled down his trousers in the queen’s private chambers…’

  ‘His trousers?’ the man repeated, alarmed.

  ‘Yes. It was horseplay…’ Fleet trotted gaily around on the shingle, whinnying. ‘He was pretending to be a horse, see?’ he chortled.

  ‘Goodness me. And how did the queen respond?’

  ‘She was furious. She went straight to Edward and she forced him to choose…’

  ‘Between her and John?’

  ‘No. Between John and Jane Shore.’

  ‘Jane Shore?’ The man scowled. ‘How does she enter the story?’ Fleet rolled his eyes, despairingly: ‘Edward was in love with her, of course.’ ‘In love?’

  ‘She was his maîtresse.’

  ‘His maîtresse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man mulled this over for a moment and then the penny suddenly dropped. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘his mistress. I see…So who did he choose?’ he asked.

  ‘He chose his hure…’

  ‘Fleet!’ Elen chastised him. ‘Enough!’

  But Fleet ignored her. ‘He told John to leave the court, and said if he ever came back he would set the hounds on him…’

  He snapped at the air again: ‘Beita!’

  ‘So did John ever dare come back?’ the man wondered.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Fleet smiled, as if delighted by the question, ‘John always comes back. That’s the whole point.’